Episode Transcript
Hosea chapter 11, and we'll be moving into verse 2 this morning, God willing.
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The title of the message is prophetic accommodation part 2.
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In verse 1 last week we learned about prophetic accommodation.
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In Hosea 11 chapter 1, we looked at last week, it says, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him
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and called my son out of Egypt."
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Now in the New Testament that was quoted for when Jesus was called out of Egypt after Herod died.
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But the verse we're reading in Hosea was not directly speaking about God calling Jesus out of Egypt,
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it was directly speaking about God calling Israel out of Egypt.
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Prophetic accommodation is when an Old Testament prophecy doesn't directly speak of a certain future event,
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but the principle it teaches applies to a certain future event.
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Makes sense?
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Essentially if the Old Testament shoe fits, then the New Testament shoe must wear it.
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And we see this type of accommodation in the New Testament such as our verse last week,
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again when God called his son out of Egypt, which was referring to Israel being God's son.
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Remember God told Pharaoh, "Israel is my firstborn son."
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That was on pass overnight.
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And so God slayed all of Egypt's firstborn, but he kept his own firstborn alive.
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But not only does it directly speak to Israel being God's son, but it indirectly applies to Jesus Christ.
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And if it indirectly applies to Jesus Christ, then it indirectly applies to his church.
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If God called Israel out of Egypt, Jesus being part of Israel, he had to have called Jesus out of Egypt,
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and us being part of Jesus, he had to have called us out of Egypt.
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It's prophetic accommodation.
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The word church means called out.
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It's a beautiful thing to learn, prophetic accommodation.
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The Bible says he's called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
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In Hosea chapter 11 verse 1, underscore the word called.
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Called, that's from the verse last week, underscore the word called.
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God said, "I called my son out of Egypt."
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If God called Israel out, then God called Jesus out, then God called us out,
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and I am so glad that we've been called out of this mess.
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Now keeping all this in mind, move down with me to verse 2, where God says,
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"As they called them," underscore the word called again.
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Now in verse 1, God said, "I called my son out of Egypt."
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He told Pharaoh, "Let my people go."
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But in verse 2, notice that we move from "I called," I mean, we're talking about pronouns now.
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I tell you what, man, the LGBTQ+ community, they have given us a lesson in pronouns.
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Most of y'all probably didn't know what a pronoun was after you got out of English class in high school,
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but we all know what they are now.
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But I want you to notice the divine shift in pronouns now, because in verse 1, God says,
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"I called my son."
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Now in verse 2, he says, "They called."
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In verse 1, God is calling Israel to a national exodus from Egypt.
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In verse 2, God is calling Israel through the Old Testament prophets
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who have already been called out of Egypt, who are now in the Promised Land,
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but who have turned away from God to their sins.
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And so God, through the prophets, has been calling them to come back to Him
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who called her out of Egypt in the first place.
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Makes sense?
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When she was but a child as a nation, when Israel was a child,
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I called my son out of Egypt, in the infancy of Israel's nationality,
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God called them out of Egypt, and now as they have grown into their adolescence,
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as a nation, they are in the Promised Land, they leave God,
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and now God sends prophets, and those prophets are calling them out of Egypt again.
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They're calling them by God's Spirit to abandon their false worship and return to their God.
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This is some very weighty doctrine, church, if you haven't noticed yet.
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I want you to watch how God Himself is accommodating this verse.
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It's fascinating to me.
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Watch how God accommodates the time of Israel's infancy in verse 1
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to the time of Israel's apostasy in verse 2.
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Now, for those who aren't familiar with the terminology,
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apostasy means do you have a nation or a person who professes faith in God,
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and then they abandon that faith in God, and they have apostasized from that faith.
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They know the truth, then they reject the truth, and then they leave that truth.
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God is accommodating verse 1, which was speaking about Him calling Israel out in their infancy,
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and He's applying it now to verse 2.
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In verse 1, God called the nation of Israel, who was in Egypt,
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He called them out of Egypt geographically, physically.
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Now in verse 2, God called the nation of Israel, who was already in the Promised Land,
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out of Egypt spiritually.
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They were spiritually in Egypt.
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As this world comes to its end, and it's getting there,
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and every day we're getting closer and closer,
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and we are seeing more and more evidence that what the Bible says is true,
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and how this world cannot continue on unless God starts over and makes it new again,
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like He did with us, the death and resurrection with Christ.
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As this world comes to its end, God is going to send, right now we don't have prophets.
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I was explaining that in the Genesis of Jesus class this morning.
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God has closed the canon of Scripture with the book of the Revelation.
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We have all the prophecy we need right now,
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but there's going to come a time in the end when we'll need prophets again.
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So when you get to the book of the Revelation,
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in this extraordinary period of the world's history,
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God is going to send what's referred to as two witnesses,
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and they're going to come prophesying again.
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They're going to prophesy, they're going to perform miracles,
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just like some of the prophets did in the Old Testament.
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Pretty exciting stuff.
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And I want you to listen to what the Apostle John said would happen
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after these prophets finished their testimony against this wicked world.
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It's in Revelation chapter 11, verse 7 and 8.
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Revelation 11, verse 7 and 8 says,
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"And when they shall have finished their testimony,
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the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them
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and shall overcome them and kill them."
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And their dead bodies...
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Anyone want to sign up to be one of those two prophets, by the way?
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And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city
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which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt.
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You think, well, what city is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt?
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Well, he goes on to explain.
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He says, "We're also... Our Lord was crucified."
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This is Jerusalem.
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All right?
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So this is the Holy Land.
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And guess what God is calling Jerusalem?
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He says spiritually, they're Egypt.
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They're Sodom.
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And so you can see now through a prophetic accommodation in the book of Hosea,
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God called Israel out of Egypt physically when He called them out in their infancy.
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And now that they're in the Promised Land,
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here He is calling them back out of Egypt again
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because even though they were no longer physically in bondage to Egypt,
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they were spiritually in bondage.
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They were like Egypt.
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They were like the world that they were called out of.
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Jesus wasn't crucified in Sodom and Egypt.
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He was crucified in Jerusalem.
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And they were called spiritual Egypt
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because of the state of godliness they were in.
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And now in verse 1, God called Israel out of physical bondage
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because they were physically held captive by the Egyptians.
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And now in verse 2, God called Israel out of spiritual bondage by the prophets.
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They called them because they were spiritually held captive by their sins.
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Now as God called Israel out of Egypt physically,
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so God called Israel out of Egypt spiritually,
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so God called Israel out of Egypt ecclesiastically.
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Ecclesiastically is referring to that Greek word
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that the word church, ecclesia, is translated from us
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where we get the word church.
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Again, it means called out.
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Now watch how the New Testament takes the principle of God
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calling Israel out of their spiritual bondage when they were in the land of Canaan,
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the promised land.
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Watch how God calls them out.
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He called them out physically.
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He then calls them out spiritually.
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And now when you get to the New Testament,
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this text in Hosea is accommodated again.
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And watch how God now applies or accommodates this text
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to the New Testament church in 2 Corinthians chapter 6.
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2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 14 through 18.
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In this passage, 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through 18,
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the apostle Paul speaking now to Gentile believers.
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You getting this?
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He's not speaking to Jews in Egypt.
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He's not speaking to Jews in the promised land.
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He is speaking to Gentiles in the church.
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And speaking of these Gentiles, he applies what God said to the Jews
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in the Old Testament to them, saying,
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"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,
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for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness,
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and what communion hath light with darkness,
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and what concord hath Christ with Belial,
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or what part hath he that believe with an infidel,
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and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols,
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for ye are the temple of the living God.
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As God has said, 'I will dwell in them and walk in them,
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and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.'
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Now that was written to Jews, but it's being accommodated to Gentiles.
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He goes on in verse 17, "Wherefore,
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or because of everything I just said that God just said,
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'Come out from among them, and be ye separate,'
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saith the Lord, 'and touch not the unclean thing,
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and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you,
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and ye shall be my sons and daughters,' saith the Lord Almighty."
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He's quoting again where God continued to plead with Israel
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to get out of Egypt, whether physically or spiritually,
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whether in the land of Egypt or in the promised land
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when they are in spiritual bondage taking on the gods of the nations around them.
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He's now applying that to the New Testament church,
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and thus when God calls us out of this world,
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and we begin to get revival in the church,
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and there's been some great revivals in church history.
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And when the church begins to come out of the world,
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you know what's happening? That Old Testament prophecy is being fulfilled,
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just like it was when Jesus was called out of Egypt.
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It's accommodated. What was Paul doing?
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He was applying the principle of scriptural accommodation
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to those Corinthian people,
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applying ancient spiritual truths to modern spiritual times.
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It's a beautiful thing. Church don't ever...
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Why are we learning all this, Brother Richard?
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You have to learn how prophecy works.
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You have to learn how Scripture works.
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You have to learn how application of the Old Testament works,
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because you don't ever need to let someone tell you
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that what God says to the Jews doesn't apply to the New Testament.
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How many of y'all ever had someone tell you that?
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It's a lie. It is a lie.
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Don't ever let someone tell you that what God says to the Jews
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doesn't apply to the New Testament church, doesn't apply to Gentiles.
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A popular bedtime story when I was growing up
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was the story of Cinderella.
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Cinderella.
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Cinderella, man, she was...
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You're talking about oppressed.
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I'm all about relieving the oppressed.
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Y'all know that. You're talking about oppressed,
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socially, economically, marginalized.
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She was historically an underserved child.
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And she got to go to this ball,
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made a prince. She had these beautiful glass slippers.
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But she had to get back home for midnight
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because her carriage would turn into a pumpkin.
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Y'all remember that story.
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Brother Shepherd, I bet you'd probably love to have that story read to you
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every night, didn't you?
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But she gets home, but she leaves a glass slipper behind.
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And the prince had fallen in love with Cinderella,
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and he had to find her somewhere in the kingdom,
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didn't know where she was.
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She was actually a stepchild and was mistreated at home
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and overlooked by society.
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So he went on a quest to find what woman
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her foot would slip into that glass slipper.
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Then he would know the person he met at that ball that night
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and would be able to marry her.
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And so he went around.
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They tried to put that slipper on all these women's feet
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because they wanted to marry the prince,
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and it wouldn't fit any of them.
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Finally, there's old Cinderella,
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mopping the floor, dirty, dressed in rags.
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And that slipper slips right onto her foot.
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When Cinderella wore that slipper,
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originally she was an elegant woman at the ball.
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But the same slipper that fit the elegant woman at the ball
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fit the poor stepchild at home.
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You see?
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Here's the kingdom of truth for you this morning.
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No matter who the audience is,
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or no matter when the Scripture was written,
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if a Scripture fits our circumstances,
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then our circumstances must wear the Scripture.
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I'll say it again.
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No matter who the audience was or when the Scripture was written,
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if a Scripture fits our circumstances,
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then our circumstances must wear the Scripture.
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Prophetic accommodation.
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Hosea said, "As the prophets called Israel,"
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look back in your text,
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"so they went from them."
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Notice the words "as" and "so."
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"As the prophets called, so the people went."
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From the prophets who called them.
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From the God who sent the prophets.
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How did the prophets call the people?
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Well, they called them passionately.
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God loved Israel.
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He spoke to Israel through these prophets.
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He was pleading with them
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and warning them to come back to him,
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to repent of their sins,
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and come back to the God who called them out of Egypt.
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The prophets called purposefully.
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They were sent by God for the purpose of drawing them back to him
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and fulfilling his Old Testament covenants to them.
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They called them personally to the God
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who had redeemed them from Egypt as the seat of Abraham.
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But as the prophets called them,
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so they went from them.
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The people went passionately from them.
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As God was passionate for Israel to return to him,
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so they were passionate to go away.
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Just as passionate about it.
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Hard-headed.
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The people went purposefully from them
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with full knowledge of their departure from him to go to other gods.
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The people went personally from those prophets,
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rejecting them outright because they rejected God outright.
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As they called, so they went.
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Another way of saying it is this.
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The more God called those people,
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the more they went away from them.
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The more he reached out to them, the further they went away.
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Here's the Kingdom truth this morning.
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The more people reject God's Word,
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the more distance they put themselves from that word.
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The more people reject God's Word,
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the more they distance themselves from it.
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That would be a good way of putting it.
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The Jews hated to hear the Apostle Paul speak the gospel.
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Hated it.
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In Acts chapter 21 verse 36,
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it records their words.
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It says, "For the multitude the people followed after,
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crying away with him."
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Man, get this guy away from us.
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Put him away from the face of the earth.
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Kill him. Separate him from everyone that's living.
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Man, we don't want to hear this man anymore.
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There's sometimes when the Apostles would preach,
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they would cover their ears up.
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I hate hearing it.
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Don't want to hear it.
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If you have a family member this morning who hates God's Word,
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then you'll notice that they will put distance between you and themselves
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if you are testifying God's Word to them.
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If you represent the standards of God,
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they want to flee from that.
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Away with him. Get away.
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And they want that distance between you and themselves
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because you represent the Lord.
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As the prophets called them,
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so they went from them.
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Man, you watch people today, they hate Christians.
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They hate the church.
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If it's anything to do with God's program for the church or for Israel,
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they hate it.
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They want to destroy it and they want distance.
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You don't ever see at these protests going on right now at the colleges,
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see the police having to go out and arrest all the Jewish people
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for trying to take up for Israel.
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That's not the problem.
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They're having to deal with the anti-Israeli people.
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They have to deal with the pro-Hamas people
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and because they're the ones causing the trouble.
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It's filled with absolute hate.
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Even though they accuse us of being the ones who hate,
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they hate.
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Away with him. Away with him.
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What do they do with Jesus?
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When Jesus came to the kingdom of God, what did they do?
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Away with him. Away with him.
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Crucify him.
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Man, give us Barabbas. We can tolerate him.
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Isn't it sad when Barabbas is more like you are than God?
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You're more comfortable around Barabbas?
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That's the way it was.
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As they called, so they went.
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What else do they do?
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Look back in your text.
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They sacrificed unto Balaam.
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Now Balaam means the false gods of the people around them,
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particularly the Phoenician people.
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But I want you to notice now, get your pens out.
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I want you to notice the three things that Israel did in this verse.
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They went.
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They sacrificed.
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They burned.
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They went.
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They sacrificed.
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They burned.
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They went from the prophets.
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They sacrificed unto Balaam.
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Look back in your text.
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And burned incense to graven images.
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They went.
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They sacrificed.
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And they burned.
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Now the sacrifices and the incense, the burning of the incense,
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those were things that were instituted by God to point men to Christ.
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God performed the first sacrifice in the garden.
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He clothed the Adam and Eve with the animal skins.
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Abel made the next sacrifice, at least recorded in the Scripture.
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The sacrifices and the incense were given by God to point people to Jesus Christ.
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God gave Israel precise instructions regarding the sacrifices that they were supposed to make to Him.
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God gave Israel precise instructions regarding the incense that they were supposed to burn to Him.
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When Israel went, they went from the Lord.
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So they walked away from God, but they took the sacrifices and incense with them.
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That's what we need to understand here.
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They went.
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You would think that you would leave the whole package, right?
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You think, "Okay, I have a God here. I've got a temple here. I've got a priesthood.
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I've got sacrifices, all kinds of sacrifices.
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I have an altar of incense on the golden altar with a special formula that has to be made to be able to burn to God."
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And you would think that when they left God, they would leave all that behind.
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But when people depart from God, when they apostatize, they go, but they still sacrifice and burn.
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You see the principle we're learning here in Scripture?
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They went, but they took the sacrifices and incense with them.
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They departed from God's faith, but they retained God's rituals.
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Have you ever noticed how the people who deny the truth that we preach still want to mimic the way we preach it?
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You ever notice that? They do.
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False preachers get up. They mimic the way we preach it.
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Completely heretical Bible-denying, Scripture-denying people still want to get up and have a church.
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We have atheist chaplains right now in our colleges.
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They leave God, but they take the sacrifices and the incense with them.
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Many groups who reject the church's message still want to be recognized as a church.
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It's bizarre when you think about it.
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I mean, we've got a homosexual church here on the lake.
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They want to be a call to church. Everything we stand for is against them.
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Oh, we would love them to repent and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
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but God's Word that we preach that the church of Jesus Christ has been given,
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God did not give His Word to any other institution other than the church.
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The Bible is unique to the people of God.
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But then you have people who deny the Scriptures what they teach,
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yet they still want to be recognized as a pastor.
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They still want to be called a church.
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Their homosexual leaders want to be recognized as pastors.
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Where are these garments that look like traditional denominations?
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They deny the very fundamentals of marriage,
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but they still want to be recognized as being married.
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If you're going to walk away from God who started marriage in the book of Genesis,
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why not walk away from marriage altogether?
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But they don't.
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They deny the principles of a husband and a wife,
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but they still want to be called husbands and wives.
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Cain did this very thing.
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Cain denied the faith, but he kept the altar and the offerings.
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It's bizarre, but that's what they do.
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Here's the kingdom truth.
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People who leave the faith still sacrifice and burn.
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Why do we need to know that?
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Don't look at someone just because they're sacrificing and burning
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doesn't mean they're believing.
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Just because they have the rituals of God does not mean that they are redeemed
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by the redemption of God.
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And a lot of times churches get that truth confused.
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They see another place called a church.
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They'll call them brothers and sisters.
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Because of the chosen series, which I'm firmly against, by the way,
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but because of the chosen series,
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a lot of people now have grown more accustomed to Embraerism.
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And there's a lot of people right now who used to.
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Mormons was recognized as a cult.
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And now you have people considering them Christians
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that just believe different than we do.
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And it's not true.
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They're a cult. They're an absolute cult.
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And when you watch things on television that ad lib Scripture,
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after a while the ad libbing seems to be real to you
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and you won't be able to discern the difference
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between what really happened and what the Scripture says.
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And you'll get a false idea of Christ's attitude,
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their demeanor and everything else.
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I have not watched the series.
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I've only watched clips of it.
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And the things that I've watched, they're not biblical.
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And I don't want anything stuck in my head
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that's going to compromise my discernment of what biblical reality is.
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Makes sense?
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Rituals give people the appearance of being legitimate and sincere.
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Cain, I really believe that some people read the story of Cain and Abel
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and they actually feel sorry for Cain.
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I think, "Man, here's Cain who's doing his best."
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And they wrestle with why did God accept Abel but didn't accept Cain?
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Here he is. He's got altar just like his brother.
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He's got an offering on there like his brother.
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He still comes with the same God.
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And God rejects him.
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The rituals give people the appearance of being legitimate and sincere.
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But apart from the gospel, nothing is legitimate.
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Nothing.
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When you remove the rituals from the Redeemer,
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you're left with a vain, senseless religion that has no end in sight.
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The sacrifices and incense pointed people to Jesus Christ
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and then they were all fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
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They came to an end.
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They're the end of the law.
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Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.
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But the sacrifice is an incense to false God.
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They could never be fulfilled because there's no Christ that fulfills them.
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It's not about the message of redemption they point to.
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It's about the act of sacrifice itself.
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And so people were those religions that kept the sacrifices in the incense
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that they offered.
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There was no end in sight for them.
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The sacrifices had to continue.
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That's why when Jesus came, even though they had a temple,
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Jesus said, "Your house is left unto you desolate."
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They had the priests.
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They had the rituals.
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They had the sacrifices.
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They had the incense.
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They had everything in that temple but God.
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They had everything in the temple but the faith of a savior
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who would come redeem them from their sins.
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They want to be redeemed from the Romans.
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They did not want to be redeemed from their sins.
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They didn't get it.
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All you had was sacrifices and incense.
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But the sacrifices unto the Lord, praise God, they end with His Son,
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in whom alone God is pleased with us.
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And we find rest unto our souls.
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I hope this morning that God's Word has given us the understanding
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of prophetic accommodation, how the Old Testament is applied to the new,
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and how that departing from God does not mean that you take the rituals of God away.
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You have to discern one from the other.
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Those people, when Jesus came, they had the rituals
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but they didn't have the Redeemer.
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They crucified the Redeemer.
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And because of that, God said spiritually, "They're Egypt.
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They're still in bondage."
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In any church today that does not stand on Jesus Christ and Him crucified alone,
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they're the same way.
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They're a temple with no God.
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Father, we thank You so much for Your precious Word.
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We thank You, Father, for the truth You've given us.
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We thank You, dear God, that You do so well at cutting the fat off the meat,
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at separating the wheat from the chaff and the tares from the wheat.
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We thank You, God, that You don't just accept anything that glitters like religious gold,
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that claims to be a church, that claims to be Christian, that claims to be from You,
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that claims to be teaching Your Word.
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You trim off the sacrifice.
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You trim away the incense until everything that's left,
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the only thing that's left is Jesus to whom it all points to.
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Thank You for that, Lord.
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And thank You for giving us Your precious Old Testament,
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which certainly fits our feet today.
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May we wear it in faith and full obedience, in Jesus' name. Amen.
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